Old milestone on Lancaster Pike once guided stagecoaches
CUMRU TWP. >> Talk about dedication.
On a sweltering afternoon, armed with a string trimmer, William M. Witwer waded into a thicket a few feet off Lancaster Pike in Cumru Township.
Shoulder deep in weeds and ignoring an infestation of spotted lanternfly larvae, Witwer was on a quest to preserve history.
Swiping the weed wacker back and forth with machine-like efficiency, he cleared a path to an old stone mile marker.
“I’ve been babysitting this thing for a couple years,” he said, manicuring the site with the care one might give a tombstone.
Witwer, a self-described history buff, is worried about the fate of the red sandstone marker believed to be 190 years old.
Already, it’s been cut in half.
Witwer leaned the top half against the base, and installed a wooden marker that reads “Please restore. Historical Mile Marker.”
He’s not sure how it was damaged. Most likely, it was inadvertently broken during a roadside trimming operation.
Hidden by 5-foot vegetation, the stone would not have been visible to the operator of a trimmer.
“I hate to see history literally being ground down into dirt,” said Witwer, 64, of Cumru.
Witwer is national sales director for Loading Automation Inc., a North Carolina-based company.
Faint markings on the face of the stone appear to indicate that the marker’s purpose was to alert coaches that it was 4 miles to Reading.
Berks County historian Morton L. Montgomery wrote a brief history of mile markers on Lancaster Road in “Ancient Milestones of Berks County Highways,” an article presented to the Historical Society of Berks County in 1910.
On April 16, 1829, Montgomery wrote, an act was passed authorizing a turnpike to be constructed from Reading to Lancaster.
From Reading, it was to intersect with the Harrisburg, Ephrata, Downingtown turnpike near the public house of John Gross in Cocalico Township, Lancaster County.
George Smith, George M. Keim and John Addams represented Berks County on the seven-member commission overseeing construction of the roadway.
In preparation for his article, Montgomery interviewed a veteran stagecoach driver who’d driven the highway.
There were 10 mile markers, which he calls milestones.
“They were constructed of dark red sandstone with a semi-circular top,” Montgomery wrote, “and placed on the west side of the road.”
Seven markers were placed in Cumru Township and two in Brecknock Township, he wrote. The 10th was near Adamstown, about 200 yards from the Berks-Lancaster county line.
The 10th differed slightly from the others, which led Montgomery to conclude it had been made by a different stone cutter.
Witwer has found and photographed the marker near Adamstown, which remains intact.
Ever the historian, Witwer was excited to learn of the Montgomery article.
The stone markers, he believes, were an important development in travel over an era that spanned stagecoaches to automobiles. More durable than wooden signs, the stone markers had a lasting impact on travel.
“It was an idea to make a more permanent record for the traveling public,” he said. “And, it apparently worked.”